March 11, 2005

PearPC and CherryOS Compared: CherryOS is Useless!

(above: screenshots from PearPC running Mac OS X on my Windows PC)

I am sure most of you know about PearPC, an open source software program that emulates a Mac CPU so you can run Mac OSs (including the very cool OS X) on a Windows computer (or any OS you can compile the software for). Then there is CherryOS, another program that emulates a Mac CPU and lets you run Mac OS X. There have been reports that CherryOS is simply a professional-looking version of the open source CherryOS. Being a Mac and PC user I have the Mac OS X install CDs reqired for installing both PearPC and CherryOS so I have played around with CherryOS and it would let me run my Mac OS X upgrade CD but not my full install CD (I thought it was because the full install CD was Mac specific)! So that was the end for CherryOS. I had never used PearPC before but I thought I would see if it was only CherryOS that was giving me a problem with my CDs. Sure enough PearPC worked great! I am now running Mac OS X "Panther" full screen on my Windows computer, I can even connect to the internet from my fake Mac. Looks like the people who tried to make PearPC look more "professional" also made it more buggy.